Analysis of the participation of the IS2WEB target group in the 6th IST Call

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Extending Information Society Networks to the Western Balkans Region

Analysis of the participation of the IS2WEB target group in the 6th IST Call

ABSTRACT This document analyses the impact of the support provided by the IS2WEB consortium for the 6^th IST Call, drawing on the feedback gathered by telephone interviews conducted in its aftermath. The conclusions from this analysis will be considered for future project activities.

CONTRACT NUMBER 015746

WORKPACKAGE WP2 – Organisation of IST Mentoring Workshops AUTHOR(S) Carmen Siller (UFBW-ZSI)

MAIN CONTRIBUTOR(S) All partners STATUS Final draft

CONFIDENTIALITY Public DUE DELIVERY DATE n.a.

ACTUAL DELIVERY DATE 03/11/2006

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1 Executive Summary

In this discussion paper, the IS2WEB consortium reviews the short-term outcome of the support it provided to its target group of Western Balkan research organisations active in the field of Information Society Technologies (IST). The primary objective of this endeavour has been to identify critical factors for the target organisation involvement in activities of the European Commission’s Framework Programme for Research and Development. A further aim has been to assess the overall project activities to date, in order to identify factors that enhance or impede project impact, and hence modify future support activities to meet the needs of the target group more effectively.

The necessary input for our analysis derives from a series of telephone interviews conducted between July and September 2006. Of the 86 organisations listed in the IS2WEB online directory as of April 2006, a total of 20 organisations (that is 23%) share among them 61 participations in 30 different proposals submitted to the 6^th IST call for proposals. The majority of these participations and proposals come from Republics Serbia and Montenegro and FYROM.

In addition, five out of the above 30 proposals have been retained for funding, featuring a grand total of nine IS2WeB target organisations. This translates to a 16.6% proposal success rate, and to a 45% participating organisation success rate.

A further interesting and very positive aspect of the IS2WeB-related FP6 participation is that 79% of the IS2WEB target organisations that became involved in IST Call 6 proposals are newcomers without prior experience in the Framework Programme. This shows that the IS2WEB project was able to mobilize so far untapped potential in the Western Balkans countries,

In terms of thematic orientation, the data collected shows that the majority of participations are in Strategic Objectives 2.6.5.1d – International Cooperation for eGovernment and eParticipation in the Western Balkans and 2.6.5.2 – Coordination Actions or Specific Support Actions focused on identifying constituencies and potentialities for deeper strategic cooperation. In contrast, and despite the initially strong interest towards FP6 participation amidst our target organisations, there have been no proposals targeting Strategic Objectives 2.6.1 – Advanced Robotics, 2.6.2 – Ambient Assisted Living for the Ageing Society or 2.6.3 – Search Engines for Audio-Visual Content

From this analysis it emerges clearly that our two major successes – the high overall number of participations and the introduction of a high number of newcomers in Framework Programme activities – were facilitated by the fact that the 6^th IST call had a dedicated geographical focus on the Western Balkans countries. For the European Commission this implies that there is an obvious need to keep offering opportunities for Western Balkan research organisations to participate on research projects. Accordingly, the consortium recommends that the Commission continues to launch calls with a dedicated geographical focus targeting issues of interest to the research organisations in those countries.

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2 Introduction

The 6th IST call was the last chance to submit proposals in the area of Information Society Technologies in the European Commission’s 6^th Framework Programme (FP 6) for Research and Technology, and also the first call in which the IS2WEB consortium could fully support its target group of Western Balkans research organisations in their effort towards FP 6 participation. The previous 5^th IST call was launched only shortly after the start of the IS2WEB project, and came at a time when the project target group was neither fully defined, nor rendered fully aware of the procedures and opportunities for co-operation in the Framework Programme IST priority.

In this discussion paper, we review the short-term outcome of this support, having as primary objective the identification of critical factors impacting Western Balkan research organisation involvement in Framework Programme activities. A further aim has been to assess the overall project activities to date, in order to identify factors that enhance or impede project impact, and hence modify future support activities to meet target group needs more effectively.

3 Background

3.1 IS2WEB and Western Balkan research scene

IS2WEB is a Specific Support Action (SSA) aimed at identifying suitable research organisations in the Western Balkan countries, and assisting them to get informed about and actively participate in EU-funded research in the field of Information Society Technologies.

Accordingly, the project strategy is founded on

• Identification of promising research organisations in the Western Balkan region that are suitable for participation in future IST research activities;

• Deployment of a series of IST mentoring and thematic workshops targeting the above organisations, in order to help them become partners in consortia that will submit proposals in the forthcoming calls;

• Pursuit of a dissemination strategy aimed primarily at facilitating the establishment of contacts between EU and Western Balkan research actors.

Activities so far have focussed on the implementation of the mapping of the ICT research landscape in the Western Balkans, the execution of FP6-focussed mentoring workshops, and the provision of participation-support services between February and April 2006; the latter have comprised both standard helpdesk-type activities as well as the more intense promotion of the most innovative and motivated amidst our target organisations.

3.2 Methodology

Preliminary information about the participation of the IS2WeB target group in the latest IST call has been gathered through a series of reports providing insight on the Framework Programme-related activities of these organisations following the IS2WeB mentoring workshops. The reports were designed by PLANET and ZSI, filled-in by the local consortium partners at regular 10-14 day intervals, and were fact-checked with the local IST NCPs whenever possible. The resultant picture that emerged immediately after the IST Call 6 closure was that more IS2WeB target institutions had become involved in IST proposals than initially anticipated or hoped, and consequently generated the need for

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more detailed information in order to enable a more in-depth understanding of the factors influencing Western Balkan involvement in FP6 IST research projects.

In this context, the consortium developed and conducted a telephone survey between May-September 2006 (Annex I). The choice of this approach was based on (1) the need not to annoy the target research population by asking them to fill in an IS2WeB-related questionnaire once again¹; and (2) the assumption that it would be difficult to chase participant feedback during the pending holiday period. As previously, the survey was designed by ZSI and implemented by the Albanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Serbian IS2WeB partners based on guidelines issued by ZSI. The interviews themselves were designed to take about 5-10 minutes each, and provide answers on two sets of questions:

• Involvement in and experience of IST Call 6 and other related initiatives (3 questions)

• Opinion about IS2WEB support (4 questions).

The component on other initiatives was included because both our workshop experience and preliminary report data indicated that the INCO programme was also of interest to our target organisations. On this basis, Question 1 of our telephone survey was designed to include all calls for which (1) the target group was eligible; (2) the topic could have been of relevance; and (3) the deadline was such that, if applicable, the ensuing participation could reasonably be attributed to the IS2WEB support provided. The earliest deadline thus considered was 6^th March, 2006 (INCO call), and the latest 19^th May, 2006 (eTen call). In addition, and in order to get an idea about what kind of projects the different target organisations got involved in, we also enquired after the type of instrument they applied for, if such a choice was contained within the related call for proposals. The added value expected from this type of information was knowledge whether the respondents got involved in research proposals or support actions, and the opportunity to set this insight into relation with the strategic objectives of IST Call 6.

Questions 2 and 3 were only relevant if the interviewees indicated at least a single participation in any of the calls listed. They covered the way an organisation was introduced into the consortium (7 different options), and its experience with regard to involvement in the proposal preparation phase (5 different options ranging from a very passive to a very active role).

Questions 4-7 aimed at obtaining information on the appreciation of the IS2WEB assistance delivered so far, with a view to feeding it later into the shaping of future IS2WeB support activities.

Due to the facts that a thorough analysis of the call 6 performance of the IS2WEB consortium and its target group was not foreseen in the technical annex, and that it took a while to gather even the most patchy information about participation rates and other similar data, the telephone guidelines were only finalised by end June 2006.

In the implementation phase, many partners faced difficulties in obtaining the necessary information – for instance in the Republics Serbia and Montenegro participants were found to be reluctant to reveal whether they had participated in any FP 6 proposals at all, for fear of future government subsidy cutbacks.

In general, it can be said that the feedback on this action was quite heterogeneous in the different countries. While the target group in the Republics Serbia and Montenegro, for example, was very co-operative and enthusiastic so that the local partner managed to conduct 24 interviews within July – well within the local holiday period – the situation was very different in Croatia, where some people even complained that the telephone interview

1All IS2WeB target organisations had had to fill an extensive Excel-based questionnaire at the beginning of the project. See D1.1 for more details.

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showed a “lack of professionalism”. In Albania, all three target organisations that became involved in Call 6 proposals answered the questions, while in the FYR of Macedonia only a total of five organisations were available for our telephone interviews.

A first major conclusion has been that most of the interviewees do not know enough yet to answer confidently all of our survey questions. Many confused calls, priorities, thematic areas, etc., “putting everything that is not funded from the state budget into the same basket”, as one local partners framed it. This posed great difficulties, especially in the case of Question 1, where we asked about participation in different calls. People also tended to be uncertain about proposal acronyms, relevant project type, and other similar details, so that considerable cross checking was required prior to our being finally able to analyse the data obtained.

4 Results

4.1 Analysis of IS2WEB target group’s participation

The results of the above IS2WeB survey are summarised in Table 1 and Figure 1 below: in total, 20 organisations from the project target group (that is, 23% of those listed in the directory as of April 2006) share among them 61 participations in 30 different proposals submitted to the 6^th IST call.

In the more detailed presentations and discussion that follow, we distinguish between the number of participations, participating organisations and proposals, in order to enable the detection of underlying networks and patterns in the participation results of the IS2WeB target group. It is interesting, for example, that while FYR of Macedonia and the Republics Serbia and Montenegro both have the same number of IST Call 6 participations (21), these are achieved by only three organisations in the former (OR, by around 7 proposals per organisation), whilst institutions from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro average just 2.3 proposals each, indicating that institutions in FYR of Macedonia are three times as active as in Republics Serbia and Montenegro. However, comparing the successful proposals, it has been found out that organisations from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro have been involved in three out of five proposals, while Macedonian institutions have participated in just one. It would thus be interesting to examine why such a considerable lower number of participations per organisations resulted in a significantly higher success rate for the organisations from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro, but this extends the scope of this survey. The IS2WEB consortium has wished, nonetheless, to lay the ground for further research in this matter.

Albania Bosnia-

Herzegovina Croatia FYR of Macedonia

Republics Serbia and

Montenegro TOTAL Listed in

Directory 16 15 8 20 27 86

Interviewees 3 11 5 5 24 48

Participating

Organisations 4 3 1 3 9 20

Without prior

experience 2 3 1 2 7 15

Total

Participations 10 9 1 21 21 62

Table 1 Overview of data pool for current IS2WeB study

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In order to present the numbers we are dealing with in the present document at a glance, Table 1 above gives an overview of the particulars of the target organisations interviewed in this survey, namely the number of organisations (1) listed in the IS2WEB online directory;

(2) answering the telephone interview; (3) participating in call 6 proposals, (4) without prior experience in EU Framework Programme activities, and (5) the overall number of participations per country.

As noted above, a total of 20 organisations from among the IS2WEB target group got involved in proposals that were submitted to IST call 6. A breakdown of this participation per country is illustrated in Figure 1 below; contrary to what might have been expected based on country size, a surprising 20% of all participating organisations come from Albania,15%

from Bosnia-Herzegovina, 15% from FYR of Macedonia, and 5% only from Croatia. In contrast, the high participation rate from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro (45%) was perhaps to be expected, given this country’s size and number of innovative research organisation.

Figure 1 Distribution of participating organisations per country

Looking now at the number of proposals per country, the picture is slightly different. Here, the majority of proposals submitted come from Republics Serbia and Montenegro and FYROM, with Albania coming third, Bosnia-Herzegovina fourth, and Croatia last with only one proposal (see Figure 2 below).

Figure 2 Distribution of proposals per country

Serbia-Montenegro Albania

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Croatia FYROM

Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia

FYROM

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A more detailed breakdown of participation per country and proposal is shown in Table 2 as follows.

Acronym Result Albania Bosnia-

Herzegovina Croatia FYROM Republics Serbia and

Montenegro TOTAL

No of organis. 4 3 1 3 9 19

Benchmark BT 2 1 3

CAPABLE BT 1 3 3 7

EGov4WB BT 2 2 4

EINet BT 2 1 3

Ellectra-Web RET 1 1 2

Ep4B BT 1 1 2

ePARTLEG BT 1 1

EPAWEB BT 1 1

e-Regions BT 1 1

ESIGA LB 1 1

FOSSIB BT 1 1

HdoX BT 1 1

Idealistfp7 RET 1 1

IDEM LB 1 1

IMPETUS BT 1 1

INPUTS BT 1 1

JUSTCOM BT 1 1

M-GOV BT 2 2

NCTS in WBC BT 1 1

NEFIS RES 1 1 2

RACWeb RET 1 1

RISEWEB BT 1 1 2 4

SEE-LEV LB 1 1

SWEB RET 1 1

TWB LB 1 1

WeBCities BT 2 2 4

WebDemocracy LB 1 1 1 2 5

WEBPRO-C LB 1 1

WEBTRUST BT 1 1 2

We-Go RET 2 2 4

Total No. of

participations 10 8 1 21 21 61

Table 2 Overview of IS2WeB target group participations by country and proposal (BT = below threshold, RET = retained, LB = low budget, RES = reserve list)

One of the most interesting aspects of the above data is that the majority of participations fall into Strategic Objectives 2.6.5.1d – International Cooperation for eGovernment and eParticipation in the Western Balkans; and 2.6.5.2 – Coordination Actions or Specific Support Actions focused on identifying constituencies and potentialities for deeper strategic cooperation. In contrast, and despite the initially strong interest towards FP6 participation amidst our target organisations, there have been no proposals targeting Strategic Objectives 2.6.1 – Advanced Robotics, 2.6.2 – Ambient Assisted Living for the Ageing

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Society or 2.6.3 – Search Engines for Audio-Visual Content². This reflects the poor alignment between the topics of these objectives and our target organisations research expertise, and is consistent with the Western Balkan research landscape identified in our earlier WP1 survey of promising ICT research organisations in the region. A summary of IS2WeB participation with respect to IST Call 6 strategic objectives is shown below.

Strategic Objective No of proposals with IS2WEB target group participation

2.6.1 – Advanced Robotics –

2.6.2 – Ambient Assisted Living –

2.6.3 – Search Engines for Audio-Visual

Content –

2.6.4 – Accompanying Actions in support of

participation in the Community ICT research 1 2.6.5.1a – Digital Broadcasting Latin America – 2.6.5.1b – Digital Broadcasting China – 2.6.5.1c – Grid Technologies China – 2.6.5.1d – eGovernment Western Balkans 15 2.6.5.2 – CAs or SSAs for strategic

cooperation 14

Table 3 Allocation of proposals with IS2WEB target group participation

Associated with the latter proposal thematic distribution is the lack of involvement of our target institutions in Integrated Projects (IPs) and Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREPs), as neither Strategic Objective 2.6.4 nor Strategic Objective 2.6.5 were calling for IPs or NoEs. Therefore, out of the 30 proposals with participation from the IS2WEB target organisations, only six - or 20% - are STREP research projects whilst 16 proposals (53.3%) are Specific Support Actions (SSAs) and 8 proposals (26.6%) are Coordination Actions (CAs).

Lastly, a further interesting and very positive aspect of the IS2WeB-related participation is that 79% of the proposal-participating target organisations are newcomers without prior experience in the Framework Programme: this shows that the IS2WEB project was able to mobilize so far untapped potential in the Western Balkans countries, and also create substantial additionality.

Based on all the above, it immediately becomes clear that the two major project successes – the high overall number of participations and the introduction of a high number of newcomers into FP projects – were facilitated by the fact that the 6^th IST call had a dedicated geographical focus on the Western Balkans countries. On the other hand, it should be noted that although the latter factor was clearly important, the thematic focus of the relevant subsection of the Strategic Objective 2.6.5, eGovernment and eParticipation did not favour the IS2WEB target group (universities and research institutions) particularly – the emphasis was perhaps more on governmental organisations that would implement and apply corresponding tools and services. This is supported by the fact that two organisations from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro and three from Albania which participated due to IS2WEB support are not listed in our directory as they do not fit into the target group profile (also see section 4.1 – Albania, and 4.5 – Republics Serbia and Montenegro later).

2 Participations in SOs 2.6.5a–c with geographical focus on Latin America or China were not expected anyway

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Turning now to success rates, a grand total of five of the above proposals involving 10 different IS2WeB target organisations have been retained for funding (highlighted green rows in Table 2 above). In particular, one Albanian organisation has been involved in one retained proposal, whilst the successful participations from the other target countries are Bosnia-Herzegovina – 2 organisations in two proposals; FYR of Macedonia – two organisations in one proposal; and from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro – four participations in three proposals, an overall distribution that is quite reasonable when compared to the size and potential of the research community in those countries.

Collectively, the mean success rate for proposals has been 16.6%, and the mean success rate for organisations 45% (the latter figure derives because none of these organisations is involved in more than one successful proposal). Note that whilst this very positive outcome did not depend on IS2WeB influence, it nonetheless represents a very advantageous turn of events for the project as it has enhanced the subjective satisfaction of the target organisations.

Some further details on national participation are provided in sections 4.2-4.5 below.

4.1.1 Albania

In Albania, four out of the 20 organisations (or, 20%) listed in the directory participated in seven IST Call 6 proposals. Three of these organisations are newcomers with no prior experience in the Framework Programme for Research and Development.

Collectively, the four organisations share ten participations among them. All organisations have benefited from the IS2WeB matchmaking activities, as two of the participations are the outcome of direct IS2WeB recommendations of the particular organisation to the proposal co-ordinators, and another one resulted from special information forwarded by the consortium to the target group. Five participations were achieved through replies of the target organisations to partner searches listed at IDEALIST website. For two more we do not know how the organisation got involved in the consortium.

Apart from the above four institutions, there are three more organisations that have been actively helped to participate in IST Call 6 proposals by the local IS2WeB partner. However, these are not listed in the online directory, as their activities do not fit the scope of the IS2WEB project. Accordingly, no IS2WeB telephone interviews have been conducted with their representatives.

Altogether, considering that in the first five FP6 IST calls Albanian organisations had submitted 13 participations and only a single proposal had received funding (a success rate of 7,7%), the fact that IS2WEB-supported Albanian organisations alone significantly increased these numbers in the last call can be considered both an important improvement for this country and a significant project achievement.

The biggest success for IS2WEB in Albania was undoubtedly the fact that it managed to ensure the participation of a renowned university institute in the IDEALIST FP7 proposal.

To elaborate further, in mid-March 2006 we learned that a new proposal for IDEALIST was being prepared for submission to IST Call 6. In the following, we tried to convince the German co-ordinator to take on board an Albanian partner through intervention of the local partner in IDEALIST-EXTEND in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Austrian IST NCP (who is at the same time partner in the Idealist 34 project) but we were told that the consortium was already closed at that point, some four weeks before the call deadline. The IS2WEB co-ordinator then send a message to the IDEALIST co-ordinator, stressing the importance of covering Albania as well, and of offering the motivated organisations in that country the same service as in more than 40 other countries. This proved successful, and then direct contact between a ZSI representative and the Albanian IST NCP from the Ministry for Education and Science resulted in an agreement to propose the mentioned institute for the role of the Albanian IDEALIST FP7 partner. As this proposal

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was eventually selected for funding under Strategic Objective 2.6.4, the IS2WEB consortium will be able to work closely with this organisation with regard to future activities within FP7.

Concerning the involvement of Albanian organisations in the proposal preparation phase, it was generally rather limited: the Albanian participants were either only expected to provide the necessary administrative documentation, or at the most comment on text written by other consortium partners – in most instances the proposal co-ordinators.

4.1.2 Bosnia-Herzegovina

Three out of the eleven organisations (or nearly 30%) that responded to our telephone interview in this country participated in the 6^th IST call: these organisations represent 20%

of those listed in the directory. One of the organisations was very active and got involved in six proposals, whilst the other two participated in one each, bringing the total to eight participations from Bosnia-Herzegovina. All of these organisations are new to the Framework Programme and have no prior experience in EU-funded research.

Four of the above participations, that are a full 50%, were achieved through recommendations from the IS2WEB EU partners. Another one was the result of a recommendation by the local IS2WEB partner, whilst in the other three instances the related organisations were alerted by their own contacts and invited to join the related consortia.

For most of these participations (five proposals), the related proposal co-ordinators did almost everything on their own, whilst the Bosnian participants had only to fill in the required administrative forms. However, another Bosnian participant involved in two different proposals had be involved much more substantially in the proposal preparation phase, contributing text to the pertinent workpackage sections and even composing important parts of one of the proposal texts themselves. It is worth noting that this particular organisation is a newcomer, and in this respect their degree of involvement in these proposals represents a rather unique situation, probably related to their very proactive, down-to-business approach.

Regarding support from the IS2WEB consortium, only one organisation of those that participated in proposals (33%) required help with their A2 forms, cost calculations, and the formulation of a partner profile. However, due to the fact that this was the above-mentioned very proactive organisation, IS2WEB directly supported 62,5% of submissions that involved Bosnian organisations from the project’s target group. Furthermore, another organisation which was included in one project proposal together with this “most active” organisation received help with A2 forms, cost calculation and the formulation of a partner profile through the latter, since the two are very interlinked in their business activities. However, this additional organisation is not listed in our directory and has hence not been considered when conducting the telephone interviews.

In total, nine of the interviewed organisations (90%) found the workshop information and material helpful, whereas our matchmaking support was appreciated by the only organisation that asked for it (33%). The overall support from the project was ranked as very useful by 50% and as somewhat useful by 30% of the surveyed organisations, whilst one further organisation was undecided about it. One interviewee did not answer this question.

4.1.3 Croatia

Of the five Croatian organisations that were available for our telephone interview, none participated in a IST Call 6 proposal. However, one did participate a eContent+ proposal unrelated to IS2WeB, and another one became involved in an INCO proposal, but could not

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remember the proposal acronym; yet a third respondent stated that they regularly participate in international collaboration projects, but that they are usually invited through their own contact network as they are a well-known organisation.

As no support from the IS2WEB consortium has been required for these participations, the influence of the project to boost Framework Programme participation in Croatia has remained limited as to-date: one of the possible reasons for this could be the temporal coincidence between the IST Call 6 closing date and a national deadline for the submission of proposals for government funding. In addition, there may not have been sufficient time for the target organisations to fully benefit from the IS2WeB participation coaching services offered after the corresponding national mentoring workshop, as the latter took place only one month ahead of the IST Call 6 deadline.

A further possible explanation for the limited mobilisation of our target group for IST Call 6 participation may be that since Croatia is now eligible for participation in other Community programmes and initiatives, the focus on the Framework Programme is less intense than in the other Balkan countries of the region. Along similar lines, Croatia’s newly-won full integration into the Community’s Framework Programme may have been an important factor, limiting both this country’s interest and participation in geographically-focussed Strategic Objectives such as those present in the latest IST call. However, this interpretation is not readily supported by the evidence available to us to-date, as apparently participation by Croatian organisations was rather limited in SOs 2.6.1, 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 as well. Finally, a number of organisations have been somewhat unwilling to demand assistance towards participation, giving the impression that they already know enough about the Framework Programme and the IST priority instead; this reading is further supported by the fact that it was rather difficult to mobilise the target group for the national mentoring workshop as well, always compared to the other IS2WeB target countries.

Overall, it can be said that Croatia differs considerably from the other countries in the region, both in terms of its actual IST participation and of its response towards participation- assistive measures such as IS2WeB. This may in turn reflect Croatia’s relative advancement in respect to knowledge about EU procedures, and may be viewed as a sign that the country is not anymore “in the same basket” as the other Western Balkan countries in the area.

4.1.4 Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Of the 20 organisations from this country listed in the IS2WEB directory as of April 2006, only five have answered the IS2WeB telephone interview questions. Three out of them (i.e.

15% of those listed in the directory) have participated in IST Call 6 proposals, and two out of these are newcomers to the Framework Programme. However, and notwithstanding the fact that the overall number of IS2WEB-supported participants is rather low, the fact that these have been very active and share 21 participations among them should certainly be highlighted. This translates to an average of seven participations per organisation, something that can be easily explained for a Faculty and an Institute from the University of St. Cyril and Methodius, as they both feature a rather high number of researchers. The third participating organisation is a small think tank with three researchers.

In addition to the above, one more organisation from FYROM was involved in the preparation of a proposal to be submitted under IST Call 6; in the end, however, they decided not to participate as the focus of the project proposal did not fit in with their business interests. Moreover, a further FYROM organisation was approached by an FP5 project consortium to substitute a partner that had dropped out. However, the negotiations did not turn out to be of mutual satisfaction. For these activities, both of the organisations concerned requested support from the IS2WEB consortium.

Furthermore, a yet another FYROM research organisation not listed in the directory also participated in a proposal submitted to IST Call 6. This organisation qualifies for the project

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target group, but due to the fact that they have not yet filled the IS2WeB questionnaire, they are not listed in our directory. Nonetheless, their representatives have participated in the IS2WEB mentoring workshop in Skopje, where they met the IS2WEB EU partners, who then later recommended them to participate in the said proposal and also supported them with regard to partner profile development, A2 forms, and cost calculations. Still, as this organisation’s representative was not available for our summer telephone interview, their participation has not been considered in the statistics discussed in this report.

Finally, it should be noted that in addition to the proposals submitted by the IS2WeB FYROM target contacts, three more proposals have been submitted to IST Call 6 by different research groups in some of the same target research entities: while such submissions cannot of course be directly attributed to the IS2WEB activities, it might well be that our project has contributed to this outcome indirectly. However, none of these participations has been taken into account for the statistics in this document.

Concerning triggers to participation, the ways to get involved for organisations from the FYR of Macedonia have comprised the whole range of options from replying to partner searches, initiating own partner searches, recommendation by IS2WEB partners, actively contacting their own contacts, and being invited to participate by their own contacts.

With regard to experiences during the proposal preparation phase, it can be said that two organisations were involved rather passively and had to prepare the related administrative information only, or to provide feedback on what the co-ordinator had written. Another two organisations had a more active role, and were substantially involved in writing the proposal by means of online collaboration.

4.1.5 Republics Serbia and Montenegro

At the time of the closure of the 6^th IST call, the Republics of Serbia and Montenegro where still joined in a state union. Also, the local IS2WEB partner is covering and representing both countries for the duration of the project. Therefore, at the time the data here was compiled, it was decided not to make a distinction to reflect the new situation, as this would rather point towards the future while the current document is analysing the recent past.

The 24 interviews conducted in Republics Serbia and Montenegro cover 22 organisations.

This is because for two organisations more than one representative is listed as contact person, and so in order to obtain as much information as possible and be able to verify the data obtained, the local partner has opted for talking to them all. Of these, nine stated that they participated in the last IST call, eight in the latest INCO call, and one in the Marie Curie call with deadline 17^th May, 2006. Interestingly, there is hardly any overlapping, as one might have assumed: only one organisation that participated in this INCO call participated as well in the IST call, and this is an experienced institution with significant prior expertise in international INCO and FP collaboration projects. A total of six organisations did not participate in any call in the period between being registered with IS2WeB and the time of our telephone interview. This means that of the 32 organisations from Republics Serbia and Montenegro registered in the online directory, more than 50% have participated in at least one proposal.

In the following, we will concentrate on the IST participations, as the INCO participations can not be attributed to IS2WEB activities: while the subject was briefly covered in the mentoring workshop, none of the organisations that participated in INCO proposals required any support from the IS2WEB consortium, and all where either approached by their own contacts and invited to participate, or else actively contacted their own contacts.

The person representing the organisation that participated in the Marie Curie proposal did not answer that question, but the consortium knows that no IS2WeB assistance was required either.

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As in the other countries, the IS2WEB consortium managed to mobilise institutions that so far had no experience with regard to FP participation — 77% (or seven out of nine) of the participating organisations became involved in Framework Programme activities for the first time. In total, the nine organisations taking part in IST proposals share among them 21 participations, that is an average of 2.6. For one organisation, the IS2WEB contact persons themselves did not participate but colleagues from the same institution did: as we know that the interviewee, who is the School’s Dean, strongly supports such activities and disseminates all information received through IS2WEB within the organisation, we can count the resulting three participations as indirectly attributable to our project.

It is noteworthy that in the Republics Serbia and Montenegro, the local partner was crucial for the promotion of participation. From those that answered the second question on how they got involved in the forming consortia, four indicated that they were introduced because of recommendations by the local IS2WEB partner (44,4%). The second most important way to get involved was being invited by own contacts to participate (22%).

With regard to the degree of involvement in the proposal preparation phase, the majority of organisations (57%) were only expected to provide administrative information and feedback on text written by others. However, two other organisations were assigned a more active role, and were asked either to contribute workpackage-specific text to the pertinent proposal, or provide substantial parts of text in virtual collaboration with the corresponding co-ordinator. One organisation was limited to the provision of administrative information only.

Lastly, two of the nine organisations from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro that participated in IST Call 6 proposals are not listed in the IS2WEB directory. Nevertheless, their participation can be directly attributed to IS2WEB as the local IS2WEB partner was approached by the proposal co-ordinators and thus recommended the two organisations concerned; in the following these were provided with the necessary support like all other target organisations. We have decided, however, not to include these organisations in the directory as their key strengths are not in IST research, but on eGoverment, which was the focus of the proposals they took part in. On the other hand, these two organisations did participate in the telephone interviews, so their answers are taken into account in all the above statistics — they are just not counted when it comes to making reference to the number of organisations listed in the IS2WEB directory.

5 Discussion

When drafting the telephone interview guidelines, the rationale for including some questions assessing the IS2WEB support was to find out to which extend the activities of the consortium partners actively helped the target organisations to get involved in Framework Programme activities. Providing relevant information in the workshops and through preparation material and newsletters was a first step, and this was then followed by offering help-desk services answering concrete questions posed by the most proactive organisations as well as matchmaking support recommending certain organisations to EU proposal co-ordinators. By asking questions about the perception of the IS2WEB support, the consortium hoped to learn what kind of support activities were sought after and appreciated the most by the target Western Balkan research organisations, so that they could be continued and intensified, if possible, during our next series of workshops and the forthcoming FP7 calls.

On a different note, looking at the IS2WEB partners’ own participation in proposals submitted to call 6 and putting this information in perspective relative to the target group participation has provided us with further useful insights into the way networks worked. This exercise showed that the consortium’s efforts to involve target group organisations in the proposals they themselves were participating helped to a large extend achieve the very positive participation results described and analysed in section 4 above.

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5.1 General evaluation of the IS2WeB support

An overview of the target organisation views on the assistance offered by IS2WeB through its mentoring workshops and post-workshop participation coaching services is provided in Table 3; it should be noted that multiple answers were possible for each of the four questions relating to the IS2WEB support, and that not all interviewees answered all questions.

Albania Bosnia-

Herzegovina Croatia FYROM Republics Serbia and

Montenegro TOTAL

No of respondents 3 11 5 5 24 48

A2 forms 1 4 5

Cost

calculation 2 1 2 4 9

Company

profile 1 1 4 6

Other Support

required

None 1 9 5 2 10 27

Workshop info &

material 3 9 4 4 17 37

Answers to

info request 2 2 4 4 12

Matchmaking

support 1 1 2 4 8

Useful support

Other

Very useful 3 5 3 11 22

Somewhat

useful 3 1 4 10 18

Undecided 1 1 2

Not very useful Overall

support

useless

Table 3 Appreciation of IS2WEB support

Of the 48 organisations that responded to the telephone interviews, more than 40% asked for support from the IS2WEB consortium in the decisive phases of proposal establishment (period between publication and deadline of the call) during call 6. Of these, 42.8% (9 organisations) had questions about cost calculation, 6 organisations (28.5% of those requiring support) needed assistance with their partner profile, and 5 organisations (23.8%) asked for help with filling in their A2 forms.

An overall 58.7% of the organisations that answered the telephone interview did not require any support at all during the proposal preparation phase: this percentage includes, but does not coincide with, the percentage of companies that did not participate in IST Call 6 proposals. If we now consider only those organisations that did participate in a proposal submitted to the 6^th call, 40% did require assistance (8 out of 20 organisations), 15% did not (3 organisations), while the remaining 45% (9 organisations) did not answer this question.

Approximately 77% of the interviewees found the IS2WeB mentoring experience useful, something perhaps to be anticipated as even those organisations that did not request special support participated in the IS2WEB mentoring workshops. Some 25% of those who answered that question (i.e. from among the total sample of respondents, including those that did not participate in a proposal) replied that they found the answers to their requests for information useful. Matchmaking support was appreciated by 16.6% of them.

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Collectively, the overall support provided by the IS2WeB consortium was judged as very useful by 45.8% and somewhat useful by another 37.5% of the forty-eight interviewed institutions. Two organisations were undecided about it, but no organisation rated our support as not very useful or even useless.

Regarding the types of additional support that the interviewees would have liked from IS2WeB, the related question was an open one where the answer given could be grouped in different categories as follows (the numbers in brackets indicates the times the related suggestions were made):

More workshops on similar issues/Educational activities (19) - Guidelines for/training in proposal writing (6)

- Consultations/direct mentoring work with organisations during proposal preparation (5)

- Support/training application procedure and administrative issues (4) - Support on financial issues (3)

- Training on evaluation procedure (2)

Updated/clearer information about actual calls and FP 7 in general (17)

- Information about the status of SMEs in FP7/information about the status of organisations from a specific country in FP 7 (4)

- Brochure with most important information on FP7/IST/other funds (1) Networking (2)

- Suggestions for choosing partners/matchmaking support (10) - How to join the right consortium (1)

- Networking between the beneficiaries of the IS2WEB project at the least twice per year (1)

- Directory-like database about potential partners with information about them (1)

The issues that were mentioned most often are (1) more workshops/educational activities on relevant topics; (2) updated/clearer information about calls and FP7; and (3) matchmaking. Interestingly, ten organisations have indicated that they would wish for more matchmaking support. This is in particular surprising as these suggestions, with one exception, come from Serbian and Montenegrin organisations, countries where the active matchmaking from the local partner was above average. This would suggest that “offer”

creates “demand”.

These results also indicate that a slot for additional training should probably be foreseen within the IST Thematic workshops, which according to the project Technical Annex is not part of the approach for these events. The request for information about calls and FP7 in general will be covered as in the past through the bi-monthly newsletter, regular extra mailings to the target group, and the news section on the website.

The suggestion for institutionalised networking among the beneficiaries of the IS2WEB project should be explored in the weeks to come, and the consortium will discuss if and how this could be implemented.

In addition to the above, a minority of interviewees mentioned issues that had already been implemented through past IS2WEB activities such as recommendations for specific calls, newsletter with information about funds, and case studies. This means that the IS2WEB consortium should promote more intensely its services such as the bi-monthly newsletter, the targeted messages highlighting certain partner searchers during the future IST open calls, etc.

Other suggestions have included training in eGovernment and providing insight into the implementation of different projects, as well as information about project results. The first of these issues may be tackled in the upcoming IST thematic workshops in the form of know- how transfer, as it is one of the major topics of interest to the target group. However, this

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depends also on the focus of the first two IST calls in FP 7. To address the second issue, a number of FP6 project showcase brochures could be developed and distributed to the participants of the next series of IS2WeB workshops, for example.

Some other issues mentioned are unlikely to be implemented through future activities, such as regular reminders (every two weeks) for people to be active, or an overview of all projects submitted. One organisation wished for “Information about calls before they are actually open. When open, deadlines are always too close for us”. Other suggestions are out of the influence of the consortium such as including more SMEs from the Republics Serbia and Montenegro, as one respondent wished. All types or organisations registered with IS2WEB are treated in the same way and will continue to receive the same support.

The Strategic Objectives of the 6^th IST call, unfortunately, were not very favourable for Western Balkans SMEs. Hopefully this will change in FP7.

5.2 Analysis of IS2WEB partners’ participation

Informal discussions amongst the IS2WeB partners during and after the call revealed that all seven partner organisations where involved in new proposals themselves. Given the fact that for all the project Western Balkans partners IS2WEB is the first Framework Programme project they participate in, we wanted to test if a basic assumption of the IS2WEB approach could be asserted: that networking is critical – that is, once an organisation gets started in EU-funded (research) projects, it will be asked again and will even be able to act as a kind of “door opener” for other organisations from its country/region.

Considering this, the idea to visualise the growing network was developed. A short questionnaire was designed and filled-in by the partners (see Annex 2). We found that in total, the five Western Balkans IS2WEB partners share among them 22 participations in 12 different proposals submitted to the 6^th IST call.

No of IS2WEB Western Balkans

partners (5)

No of IS2WEB target group

partners

No of IS2WEB EU partners

(2)

SCORE 4 0 2

WEBTRUST 1 2 1

CAPABLE 2 5 0

IMPETUS 2 1 0

NEFIS 2 2 1

eINet 3 4 0

RACWeB 1 0 1

ELLECTRA-WeB 1 1 1

WebCities 1 3 0

FOSSIB 3 1 1

eGOV4WesternBalkanss 1 5 0

WEB-Democracy 0 3 2

EC Balkans 1 0 0

EDELWEISS 0 0 1

SAGE AmI 0 0 1

Total number of

participations 22 27 11

Table 4 Network of Participations

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A closer look at the data provided in Table 4 above reveals that two proposals have three Western Balkans IS2WEB partners among the consortium, whilst three project applications have two partners from this group. One project proposal (SCORE) was submitted by the IS2WEB co-ordinator and included four Western Balkan consortium partners.

There are only three proposals (two of which were submitted in SO 2.6.3 – Ambient Assisted Living for the Aging Society by ZSI) in which only a single IS2WEB partner organisation participated without being able to introduce either other IS2WEB partners, or organisations from the target group into the consortium. On the other hand, ten out of the 15 proposals listed above (that is to say, 66%!) that were submitted under IST Call 6 SO 2.6.5d (eGovernment for the Western Balkans) involved organisations from the IS2WEB target group as well. Two of these project applications even included five target organisations each, and a third one included four.

Figure 3 IS2WeB target organisation participation (orange columns) in IST Call 6 proposals as a function of IS2WeB W Balkan (green) and/or EU partner participation in the same proposal (blue columns)

Compared to the overall number of participations from IS2WEB target group organisations (61), the above observations make explicit the importance of networks and actively introducing organisations in forming consortia. Providing organisations with little or no FP6 experience with theoretical information about how to participate does not seem enough. In contrast, 43.5% of the IS2WEB target group organisations got involved in consortia with IS2WEB partners. This is fully in line with the findings of the IDEALIST survey conducted between January and February 2003 on “How research project co-ordinators choose partners for IST proposals”, which was taken into account when developing the IS2WEB approach³. In particular, the IDEALIST study highlighted the fact that experienced proposers find partners for their consortia mainly from previous collaborations (49%), or

3 See IS2WEB Technical Annex, p. 12

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

SCO RE WEBT

RUST CAPAB

LE IMPET

US NEFIS

eINet RACW

eB

ELLE CTRA-WeB

WebCities FOSSIB

eGO

V4WesternBalkanss WEB-

Dem ocracy

EC Balkans

EDE LWEISS

SAGE AmI

W Balkan target organisation participation W Balkan IS2WeB partner participation EU IS2WeB partner participation

Number of Participants

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

SCO RE WEBT

RUST CAPAB

LE IMPET

US NEFIS

eINet RACW

eB

ELLE CTRA-WeB

WebCities FOSSIB

eGO

V4WesternBalkanss WEB-

Dem ocracy

EC Balkans

EDE LWEISS

SAGE AmI

W Balkan target organisation participation W Balkan IS2WeB partner participation EU IS2WeB partner participation W Balkan target organisation participation W Balkan IS2WeB partner participation EU IS2WeB partner participation W Balkan target organisation participation W Balkan IS2WeB partner participation EU IS2WeB partner participation

Number of Participants

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based on suggestions by other consortium members (23%). One of its main findings was that “ [...] the potential problem for newcomers [is that] if they are not already collaborating with an existing participant, the opportunities to join a consortium are limited⁴” .

6 Conclusions

The conclusions to be drawn from this analysis of the IS2WEB performance in the 6^th IST call are twofold. For the European Commission the results here indicate that there is a clear and ongoing need to continue offering opportunities for Western Balkan research organisations to participate on research projects. The compulsory inclusion of organisations from specific countries in forming consortia is of course not the means to this end, as it can be counterproductive and end in promoting the most compliant as opposed to the most innovative research institutions. Based on our experience, it seems rather preferable that the Commission continue to launch calls with a dedicated geographical focus targeting issues of interest to the research organisations in those countries. In addition, attention should be paid so that the call topics do not overtly favour particular types of organisation over others.

According to the initial IS2WEB mapping questionnaire, whose relevant question was based on the European Commission’s suggestion for FP 7 available at the time of designing it, the following are the topics that attract the highest interest among the Western Balkan research organisations:

ICT Technology Pillars

- Software, grids, security and dependability (mentioned 50 times – among the top four topics in all Western Balkan countries but Croatia)

- Knowledge, cognitive and learning systems (mentioned 47 times - among the top four topics in all Western Balkan countries but Albania)

Applications research

- ICT for content, creativity and personal development: business processes, work company etc. (mentioned 53 times - among the top four topics in all Western Balkan countries except for Croatia)

- ICT for content, creativity and personal development: technology enhanced learning (mentioned 40 times – among the top four topics in Croatia)

- ICT meeting societal challenges for governments (mentioned 40 times – among the top four topics in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

Regarding now the IS2WEB consortium, the findings above mean that the consortium should continue its support for the Western Balkan research organisations along the same lines as of to-date, building on the emerging and existing networks both within the IS2WEB target group and other European organisations.

For the next round of workshops starting early 2007, we will consider to add a training component, as this corresponds to an expressed need of the target group. Those organisations that will now get their first experiences in EU-funded projects should also be actively involved in future activities, making their experiences available for their counterparts and fostering further networking among them.

It would have been interesting to compare the findings described in this document with the overall IST Call 6 statistics in order to be able to set the IS2WEB performance into perspective; however, due to the fact that such statistics are not available to the general public, this was not possible.

4 Drath, Paul: “How research project co-ordinators choose partners for IST proposals”, study carried out by the Ideal-ist consortium, 2003

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With regard to future studies of a similar kind (e.g. for the 1^st IST call in Framework Programme 7), we conclude that it is advisable to conduct telephone surveys shortly after the deadline for submission, as it could be noticed that quite a number of the people interviewed here could not recall or where unsure about the names or acronyms of the proposals their organisation participated in, did not remember the related instrument, etc. In a similar vein, we discovered that in more than one instances people tended to forget the IS2WeB support activities undertaken in order to help their participation in proposals, and so this represents a further reason for implementing such surveys as soon as possible after call closure (the telephone interviews for the analysis at hand were conducted between early July and mid-September, that is 9-20 weeks after the call deadline; this was due to the summer holiday period).

Finally, when carrying out the telephone interviews, our local IS2WEB partners should try to speak to the same people that attended the workshop and requested support in the preparation phase. The fact that this could not always be achieved during the data gathering phase of this study was one reason for the extensive need to verify the obtained information, as the respondents were not always aware of what really had taken place in their organisations or departments.

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Annex 1 – Telephone Interview Guidelines

Name of responding organization: ________________________________

Name of responding person: ___________________________________

1. Did you participate in a proposal submitted to any of the following calls?

[Instructions for the interviewer: Ask the respondent to name the call they participated in.

If he or she can not remember, you may read out from the list below the calls that had a deadline sometime after the workshop series. Please note that this list is not exhaustive. It comprises any call that might have been of interest to our target group in recent months.]

a) 6th IST call, closing date 25 April 2006

Yes No

If yes, what was the acronym of the proposal? __________________________

If yes, what instrument (type of project) was it?

- IP (Integrated Project) - STREP (Strategic Targeted Research Project) - SSA (Specific Support Action)

- CA (Co-ordination Action)

b) INCO call, closing date 06 March 2006

Yes No

c) eTen call (Transeuropean Telecommunication Networks – Deploying trans- European e-Services for all), closing date 19 May 2006

Yes No

d) Marie-Curie call (Conferences and Training Courses), closing date 17 May 2006

Yes No

e) Specific call to promote participation of partners from third countries in projects for which contracts are already signed or under negotiation in priority area of research, closing date 16 May 2006

- Priority 1 – Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health

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Yes No

If yes, what was the acronym of the proposal? ___________________________

- IP (Integrated Project)

- STREP (Strategic Targeted Research Project) - SSA (Specific Support Action)

- Priority 3 – Nanotechnologies and nanosciences, knowledge-based multifunctional materials and new production processes and devices

Yes No

- Priority 4 – Aeronautics and space

Yes No

- Priority 5 – Food quality and safety

Yes No

- Priority 6.1 – Sustainable development, global change and ecosystems

Yes No

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- Priority 7 – Citizens and Governance in a knowledge-based society

Yes No

2. In which way were you introduced into the forming consortium?

[Instructions for the interviewer: Ask the respondent to answer the above question in an open form and tick the appropriate box without reading out the options. If you can not decide which of the options is applicable, you may go through the list one by one.]

a) Expression of interest / reply to partner search (Ideal-IST etc.) b) Initiated own partner search (Ideal-IST or private)

c) Recommendation of IS2WEB EU partners d) Recommendation of IS2WEB local partner

e) Actively contacted own contacts

f) Contacted by own contacts and invited to participate

g) Contacted by previously unknown coordinator or other consortium members

If yes, do you have an idea why you where contacted (listed in IS2WEB directory, company website etc.)?

_______________________________________________________________________

h) Other, please specify __________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

3. What were your experiences with regard to the involvement in the proposal preparation phase?

[Instructions for the interviewer: Ask the respondent to answer the above question in an open form and tick the appropriate box without reading out the options. Please note down any comments that might be useful in this respect.]

a) Co-ordinator did everything on his own, we just had to prepare the necessary administrative information (A2 form etc.)

b) We were expected to give feedback on the proposal text written by others.

b) We were asked to contribute text to the proposal with regard to the tasks assigned to us.

c) We were substantially involved in writing the proposal (virtual collaboration).

d) We had a proposal preparation meeting.

Comments:_____________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

4. What support from the IS2WEB partners did you require?

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a) Help with filling-in A2 forms b) Help with calculation of costs

c) Help with preparation of company profile

d) Other, please specify ________________________________________

e) None

Comments:___________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

5. What support from the IS2WEB consortium did you find useful?

a) Mentoring Workshop information & material b) Answers on request for information

c) Matchmaking support

d) Other, please specify _______________________________________

Comments:__________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

6. Please rank the overall IS2WEB support on a scale from 1 – 5.

1 – very helpful 2 – somewhat helpful 3 – undecided

4 – not very helpful 5 – useless

7. What additional support from the IS2WEB consortium would you have liked?

____________________________________________________________________

Analysis of the participation of the IS2WEB target group in the 6th IST Call